Mendoza Part 1: Cycling through vineyards and horse-riding in the Andes

We arrived in Mendoza after an 8 hour bus journey, which included a 2 hour border crossing. The views were magnificent as we crossed the Andes and made our way to the infamous wine region.

As soon as we got to our hostel we started looking into what we activities we could arrange for the coming days. Mendoza is a great city for wandering around and is close to so much nature that a few days is actually not enough to spend there. We managed to stay for 5 nights and 4 full days and started off our week with a spot of wine-tasting in the Maipu region. We decided to do a self-guided tour of the vineyards, so we rented bikes from Mr. Hugo...

...and cycled from vineyard to vineyard to go on the tours and wine-tastings.

We stopped for lunch at a highly recommended local restaurant, and to my delight, they were serving their speciality, lechon! (aka suckling pig) It was delicious and so similar to how it's made in the Philippines!

We must have spent at least 1.5hours cycling that day, a fair bit more drinking, and headed back to the centre of Mendoza very happy people.

The next day we took a break from the wine-tasting and decided to head to the great outdoors for a rather unique experience, horse-riding in the Andes mountains!

Joost used to horse-ride when he was young so he was looking forward to getting back on a horse again. I on the other hand have only ever ridden a horse once before, on the beach in Thailand many years ago, so I was a little nervous, but we were assured that the ride was suitable for beginners.

After a rather long drive we got to a very secluded ranch at the foot of the Andes mountains and we were given our horses to ride for the day.

The slightly nervous feeling I had at the start quickly disappeared once I got used to Truilley, my horse for the day, and I was hooked. We started off slowly walking on the mountain but before long we went off track through the brush. On certain stretches we were allowed to trot with our horses.

After about an hour of riding we stopped for a break and to share some mate (the strong local tea) with our guides and the other riders.

We then headed on for another hour of riding climbing rather steep slopes up and down the mountain and the views were amazing. The only downside for Joost was that he didn't have the opportunity to gallop, however, all in all, we had a brilliant day out in the mountains.